


To Be Frank

by Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, It's about Frank but it still manages to have Hawkeye angst, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22442467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down/pseuds/Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down
Summary: The first time Frank Burns cries, his father slaps him across the face.He learns pretty quickly that the world is not a place for emotion.MASH told from Frank's perspective.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	To Be Frank

The first time Frank Burns cries, his father slaps him across the face.  
He learns pretty quickly that the world is not a place for emotion.

Twelve years later, he meets his wife. Her name is Louise. She's cold, and unfeeling, and she never smiles. She leaves an emptiness in his stomach and she scares him to his core, but he knows he can't do any better. His father makes that quite clear. Yes sir, this is what he deserves.  
They honeymoon to Terre Haute. Louise insists it isn’t sensible to spend so much money on something so frivolous.

He settles down with his wife, and his kids, and his house, and his car, and his private practice.  
He has so much; why does he feel so empty?

If he ever had any control over his life, he feels the rest of it slip away when Louise starts hitting him.  
He's not being abused, he tells himself. Only small wives of large husbands get abused. But sometimes she hits him hard. And it hurts. But he knows no one will believe him, so he keeps quiet.

He sleeps with his secretary. He needs control again, and he finds it in her. This is good, Frank tells himself over and over again. She wants him, something he’s never felt before. The power that he feels is unmatched.  
Until his wife finds out. Until his wife finds out and beats him within an inch of his life. He tries to cover up his bruises with makeup and tells his secretary he was in a car accident.

His oldest kid is old enough to understand what he's done.  
What she can't understand is why.  
How could Dad do this to his family?  
Louise is splintering him with every hit, every kick, every venomous word, and the look on his daughter's face is the final blow.

He can’t do it anymore. His secretary can’t understand why he no longer loves her. But he’s sick of the pain.  
He’d do anything to get the pain to stop.

The police action starts up in Korea. He finds himself invested in the story. His country fighting valiantly to stop injustice, to stop communism dead in its tracks. _And why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we be the most powerful country in the world?_

The war needs doctors. He enlists.

His wife demonstrates her displeasure with her fists, but he knows she won't try to stop him. After all, you can't say no to the army.  
He tells himself he's enlisted to serve his country, and what a fine country it is. He doesn't admit to himself that the weight that's been sitting on his chest for ten long years finally lifts the second he gets on the plane to San Francisco.

He's not a civilian anymore. He's a major in the US army, stationed at MASH 4077 in Korea. He can hardly wait to get off the plane. No more being bossed around by people smaller than him. Now is his time to shine.  
By the time he moves in, his bunk mates have already formed a kinship and don't seem interested in becoming his friend.  
That's not a problem. He's been excluded so much that he's used to it.

He doesn't really realize when he enlists that he'll have to perform medicine. Sure, his skills are adequate at his private practice, but he's used to gall bladders and tonsils. He's not used to taking shrapnel out of badly damaged bodies.  
He's not used to all the blood.  
What's worse, he's the worst surgeon here. It isn't even a contest. They're smarter, faster, and more experienced. And boy, do they know it.  
The barrage of clever insults and snotty remarks is endless, and his complaints about these attacks fall on deaf ears.  
He fights back as best he can, but deep down he knows it’s only fair. After all, it’s what he deserves.

He tries to relate to Hawkeye and Trapper by talking about his secretary.  
Turns out cheating on your spouse is only okay when Trapper does it.

He starts to find solace in a woman, a Major Margaret Houlihan. She's nothing like his wife. She's warm in all the right places and she respects him as a man. She gives him the power he craves. Takes his side in arguments. Helps him file complaints about Colonel Blake, the most incompetent man in the army. He's never felt this way about a woman in his life. Never loved someone as passionately as he loves Margaret. He starts to think that maybe his life could actually be alright.

Somehow, impossibly, his wife finds out about Margaret. He remembers what happened the last time he cheated on her, and he panics. He's not even safe from his wife in Korea.  
He calls her, flustered and fumbling. Sure, he's written her letters every week, per her request, but he's not quite ready to hear her voice again. He stammers out something about Margaret being ugly, and he thinks he's gotten away with it until he realizes that Margaret's heard everything.  
Margaret doesn't understand why he has to lie. She doesn't understand why Frank can't divorce his wife.  
Margaret throws a chair at his head. He ducks and it splinters against the wall.  
Maybe she is like his wife after all.

It turns out she was using him as much as he was using her. When someone better and stronger comes along, she ditches him immediately. Now her beautiful, confident colonel Donald Penobscott fills the void that Frank used to fill.  
Frank’s right back where he started. Except that he can barely remember who he is; he can only be the person he became for Margaret. He can't take it anymore. He's desperate to win her back. He goes on a drunken rampage and searches Tokyo for Margaret. He needs her to give him another chance. Yeah, he goes AWOL and yeah, he breaks a few rules, but he needs to see her again.

He's restationed at a veteran's home in Indiana, 15 miles away from his house. He's supposed to feel grateful to the army, for placing him so close to home, for not throwing him in the stockade. For not even taking legal action against him. But the weight's back on his chest. And this time he can't escape it.  
Maybe a small part of him hoped he would be killed in Korea. But it didn't matter if it did, because he wasn't.  
He isn’t even home for a week before the bruises repaint themselves onto his face. His wife has convinced herself that he was unfaithful. Which, in all fairness, he was. So she has every right to kick him so hard she cracks one of his ribs.  
Frank can't take it anymore. When he was 6,000 miles away from home, he still couldn't get rid of her. She really stops at nothing.

He feels a lot better once he makes the decision to end his life. He has access to so many drugs at his office, it would be so quick. So easy. So painless.  
For once, he's taking his life into his own hands. He finally has control over something.

He turns the syringe over and over in his hand, wondering who he should tell.  
His mind travels to Margaret, but he dismisses it almost instantly. She's got a brand new husband, a brand new life. She's probably forgotten about him entirely.  
He thinks about Pierce and Hunnicut, and dismisses them just as quickly. His tormentors. They would probably be glad that he was gone.  
He mentally flicks through everyone he's ever known in the army. Captain Mcintyre? Tormentor. Colonel Blake? Currently at the bottom of the sea of Japan. Colonel Potter? Callous. Corporal Klinger? Pervert. Corporal O'Reilly? Twerp.  
And it's not like there's anyone in Fort Wayne who still likes him.  
His secretary got a better job, his pre-war friends all forgot about him, the guy who fills his tank at the gas station doesn't even know his name.  
His kids don't look him in the eyes anymore.  
He can't think of even one person who would miss him.  
That makes this so much easier.  
He plunges the syringe into his thigh.

It takes a couple months for Hawkeye to get curious about what Frank is up to. Sure, he never cared enough to send him anything, but that didn't mean he didn't think about him. Charles is fun to mess with, but he doesn't have quite the response that Frank did. And he fights back, too. As much as he hates to admit it, he misses ferret face.  
So Radar places a call to Fort Wayne. A man's voice answers the phone, and when he asks for Frank Burns, Mrs. Burns comes on the line. She tells Radar, in no uncertain terms, that the late Frank Burns was killed in the police action in Korea over a year ago, that the name in the phone book is old, that she's happily remarried, and that if Radar ever contacts her again she'll pull his tongue out through his nose.  
He passes the message along to Hawkeye. Radar says he doesn't understand why she told him that Frank was killed in Korea. Frank went home. Frank is in Indiana.  
Hawkeye places a soft hand on Radar's shoulder, and Radar seems to understand what could have happened.

Hawkeye takes a long walk by the minefield.  
There is still the possibility that it wasn't a suicide. He could have been murdered, he could have disappeared, he could have run away and started a brand new life in a different city.  
But as much as he hates it, the pieces fall together perfectly. Frank had started to unravel the moment Margaret got married. It all made sense.  
Now Margaret’s happy with her Colonel Donald Penobscott.  
 _If I can have hewn oak, why do I need stucco?_  
How could she do that to him? How could she toss him aside so easily?  
Hawkeye starts to remember the pranks he pulled on Frank, all the snide remarks he effortlessly tossed at him.  
He almost feels bad for a second.  
Then he remembers Frank, the needle-nosed twerp. The man who thought he was so holy, so high and mighty. The poor doctor and even poorer person.  
Maybe he could feel sorry for him if he wasn’t so unlikeable.  
After all, it wasn’t Hawkeye’s fault that Frank acted like a miserable excuse for a person.  
Hawkeye throws a rock into the minefield and tries not to picture a lifeless Frank Burns.

Hawkeye doesn’t tell anyone what he knows.  
Why should he?  
It’s not like anyone would really miss him, and if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good to know.

Hawkeye doesn't admit to himself why he's not sleeping so well.  
He doesn't feel guilty, he tells himself. You only feel guilty when you do something wrong.  
And Hawkeye hasn't done anything wrong.  
 _It was his choice to end his own life. In the end, it was his choice._  
 _Hundreds of innocent kids die every day. What difference does one more body make?_  
Telling himself this doesn't end the gnawing emptiness he feels in the pit of his stomach.  
The same emptiness he feels every time he loses a kid on the operating table.  
 _But Frank didn't die on my watch. How could anyone blame me?_  
 _No one's blaming you in the first place._  
Hawkeye pours himself a drink.  
Recently, gin hasn't been enough to dull the pain.  
 _Frank was barely a person. It doesn't matter that he's gone._  
Something besides emptiness gnaws at him. Something that all the gin in the world can't make him forget.  
His hippocratic oath.  
 _Do no harm._  
 _I treated him how any normal person would._  
 _It's not my fault._  
 _It's his own fault for behaving the way he did._  
Hawkeye knocks back another drink, and a thought echoes through his head; the same thought he's had ever since he arrived in Korea.  
 _How many people are going to die because of me before this war ends?_


End file.
